The Ultimate Sacrifice
by moko-blue
Summary: Tenten had only anticipated on finding her teammates within the forest that day. Instead, she mangled with Deidara of the akatsuki, in spite of her efforts to stay out of potential danger. Tenten/Deidara & minor Tenten/Neji.


Summary: Tenten had only anticipated on finding her teammates within the forest that day. Instead, she mangled with Deidara of the akatsuki, in spite of her efforts to stay out of potential danger. Tenten/Deidara & minor Tenten/Neji.

A/N: I Hope you all enjoy reading this story and remember to leave a review!

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any Naruto related characters. However I do own the ideas in this story so please don't copy. It's not cool.

Chapter One

Written by moko-blue

It was a lovely day in Konoha and spring was soon to come. The weather was tropical and radiant, leaving just a chilly breeze to put up with. Trees of all colours illuminated the forests and brought life back to the Leaf village once again.

Tenten kneeled in the centre of a vast meadow. Its location was just off the peak of the forest which her team used as their training grounds. With her eyes tightly shut, she meditated keeping deep concentration as she tried to pick up the chakras of her teammates Lee and Neji.

About an hour ago when she'd agreed to the challenge, Tenten hadn't anticipated that it would take so long.

The task at hand wasn't very hard. It was more like a game of hide and seek with the exception of identifying your opponent by finding their chakra signature.

Through frustration, Tenten pulled at her chestnut brown buns and gritted her teeth. It was just too confusing to detect Lee and Neji with all the other chakras of other ninjas mixing in the mess.

"_Neji...Leeeeeeeeeee!"_ She screamed inside her head. As if that would help the situation.

She rose from the ground and headed towards the forest without giving it a moments thought. It was breaking the rules of the game completely but Tenten was too desperate to care about such things.

There was one exception though. Neji was sure to be a tricky find but Lee didn't _have_ chakra. So it was only fair for her to go and find him head on herself.

Then once she'd done that, she could focus her worries on finding the Hyuga prodigy. Simple enough.

Loose locks of hair fell out and whipped across her forehead as she ran like a determined warrior into the mess of trees and wilderness.

Very soon she collapsed on the ground in an awkward heap, unaware of who else might be leaking around in the shadows of her territory.

After catching her breath, Tenten climbed up to the top of a monstrously tall tree and sat on one of its thick branches with her legs dangling down.

"_Where are you hiding Lee?..." _She used the height of the strong plant to her advantage by taking a full scan of a limited radius of the forest.

At first it was completely hopeless because the only things on show were the peaks of smaller trees and the odd dear or two.

"_Hmph...–wait is that..."_

Tenten thought she saw a flash of green shoot across a bend in the maze of trees. She furrowed her eyebrows and leaned forward, trying to pick out where about that she'd seen it.

"_...No...it could be anything. Maybe I saw it wrong. It might not be Lee – "_

Abruptly, her thoughts were disrupted when a faint noise echoed throughout the forest. It was an eerie sort of sound; much too spooky to be real. Immediately Tenten whipped her head around and descended to the ground, holding a sharp kunai in her right hand. All thoughts of the green blur she'd seen were quickly forgotten.

It was very hard to see from ground level. The trees with their over-sized leaves blocked out the majority of sunlight trying to stream through. This gave the forest a dark and mysterious atmosphere.

After a few minutes she relaxed her stance and slipped the kunai back into her waist pouch.

"_The tropical weather is one thing, but the amount of sweat on my forehead is unnecessary." _Tenten scowled. Couldn't she have easily taken on whatever threat it might have been herself? No worries? She trusted in her own abilities, right?

Tenten then began to wipe off the salty substance trickling down her head with the hem of the vivacious lilac kimono.

Suddenly there was that sound again, rattling loudest amongst the other noises of the forest, except Tenten could begin to understand what it might be, thankfully enough. She sighed in relief and wiped the sweat off of her forehead once again.

_Very familiar... Ino screaming while holding her nose possibly? Nah... Could it be Lee rambling about the power of youth...? Or is it Neji being chased by a pack of werewolves?_

The idea of THE Hyuga prodigy in trouble was unrealistic. But as the smirk slid onto her face without permission, she knew what she wanted to investigate now.

The rapid sound continued to fill everywhere like an undying thunder storm. It got even louder as Tenten advanced deeper into the forest, but she didn't hesitate to venture on.

Soon she approached a stream which was just at the bank of a waterfall. In her earlier years, she had discovered it with her teammates, but in the end it was of no use to them. So she hadn't bothered to stop by ever since.

If it weren't for the familiar structure and route of the stream, Tenten might have forgotten it completely.

As she looked upwards and squinted, something caught her eye. It looked like a cloak which was hanging over one of the cliff edges curving at the waterfall.

Without thinking she dived into the water determined to examine it close up. She hadn't even registered the dark edge to the chilly breeze or how the birds had stopped happily chirping. And most importantly, she hadn't noticed that there was a shadow following her as she swam in the water.

Then suddenly, she was gasping as her body was pulled underwater.

It had happened so suddenly and unexpectedly that Tenten nearly forgot the most important rule for a shinobi. Always be prepared.

Although whatever it was had her arms bound behind her back so that she couldn't use them, there was still something else that they'd forgotten to restrain. Being underwater gave her a limited amount of time to breathe, but she still had her legs in action.

Unfortunately the disadvantage was on her. She couldn't aim her kick properly because the water was too murky to see through. Her arrogant captive didn't seem to see her legs as a threat either and so they didn't bother to restrain them after her failed assault. Or maybe they couldn't restrain her legs because they were too weak to do so. Maybe her opponent was injured?

There was a fifty percent chance that that could be why, considering that their grip on her arms was slightly loose and could easily be broken given enough brute force.

_That's it!_

With only a minute left to rescue herself, Tenten let the years of her hard training, mixed with the right amount of adrenaline, boil through her body like a raging tsunami crashing against a shore and obliterating it to pieces.

And then she was free! After a bit of pulling, biting, shoving, elbowing and finally, head-butting.

Frantically, she swam up to the surface of the water and shot back down the stream at an amazing speed. In fact, she was so quick that even Neji would have been impressed.

As Tenten climbed out, the only thing that worried her was _... sweet air!_

She found herself spluttering and coughing in a messy heap on the shore and her damp chocolate coloured hair must have fallen down during the struggle underwater.

"_...I escaped!" _She thought. _"...But now isn't the right time to celebrate... I must finish the job."_

Swiftly Tenten stood up holding a poison coated kunai in one hand and a weapons summoning scroll in the other. It was the same summoning scroll she'd used against Temari in the chunin exams.

"Come out! That dirty trick won't work on me again!" Tenten exclaimed. And she was right. Now that she was safe on land, the enemy was at the disadvantage instead.

"_Now all I have to do is wait. He or she will have to come up for air soon enough..."_

Unfortunately, the moment never came. Tenten started to feel like an idiot, suspecting that her opponent must have slipped out of the stream in spite of her intense hawk watch scanning the place up and down. There was no movement from the stream whatsoever.

Anyone passing by wouldn't have suspected a thing. It looked completely normal and innocent. Nothing suspicious at all. Just a murky lake on the bank of a waterfall.

Tenten knew better of course. There was something in there, capable of severe damage and destruction. Evil. _"Akatsuki?"_

The instant before she was dragged into the depths of the stream, Tenten got a good glimpse of the cloak on the cliff edge and knew immediately what she was up against. _"...blood red clouds against a dark background. You'll know what I mean once you've seen it. " _Her sensei had mentioned something like that to her team once. So that was how she knew. He'd also said that he'd pray that the day would never come for us.

The stream remained calm and stubborn, refusing to reveal signs of life or potential danger to her.

Tenten nearly lightened her stance at one point; but it was her time to shine and that kept her from giving in.

"_...anytime soon please..." _She mentally begged without showing any signs of it in her serial calmness.

Suddenly, chuckling rang from the trees behind her. Tenten swerved around upon instinct and was immediately met by the face of her opponent. She glared impassively. _"..So we finally meet, huh?"_

It was a young man possibly a few years older than her with long, blonde hair in a pony tail. He was wearing no shirt and his body was soaking in water. His left eye was masked by a long fringe and his right eye had some sort of device covering it. His ocean blue eyes bore into Tenten's own eyes like the intense stare of a serpent.

The wide, menacing grin on his face irritated Tenten to an extent as well. Without taking her eyes off him, she spoke in a hissed tone.

"That was your clone back there, wasn't it?" She stated more than anything. She'd worked it out awhile ago when she was waiting for him to show himself.

She also wanted to add to her statement that it was a very weak clone he'd sent too.

"_...it does explain why I was able to escape so easily back there..." _She mused at the thought.

Tenten shot him another death glare with her stoic, brown eyes. He sent a weak decoy to finish her off instead of coming out and doing the job himself. He was hiding in a different location where he couldn't be spotted and watched from a distance.

Although it was clever, Tenten despised those sorts of strategies. It seemed overly sneaky to her.

It also gave Tenten the impression that he was the type of person who allows his arrogance to lead him to believe that it was unnecessary to put in some effort against a kunoichi. Such assumptions are too risky to take before testing your theory.

If she was in an alliance with him, there was no way that she'd trust him about anything, word for word.

"_Damn! How I hate it when people underestimate me like this..." _She thought. _"Maybe I should change my usual hairstyle to give a more rough, brutal and capable impression?" _It wasn't the first time that she'd thought about this_. _But it was how well that Neji'd take it down that worried her most.

There was no way that he'd let Tenten lay a finger on her hair for such purposes. It was supposedly _unnecessary and indignant _from the Hyuga prodigy's point of view. He'd always tell her that there was no point in fussing about such things. In reality, Tenten had only brought it in their conversation as a joke when it had crossed her mind.

Sometimes, Neji took things way too seriously.

"_Neji... wouldn't I look deadlier if I put my hair up in one bun instead of two...? Not if I want a good hours lecture of boredom and hell with him about hair. "_

An uninvited snicker came out at the thought and she soon regretted it. A hand clasped her mouth, embarrassed and shocked. Tenten had nearly forgotten her opponent for a moment.

"What a cute giggle you've got there," Said the akatsuki member while raising an eyebrow as his lips formed a dangerous smirk.

"I'll just have to wipe it from your face with my art!" He exclaimed. Suddenly, there was a white spider about the size of an apple with beady red eyes, springing at her face full speed.

She tried not to look surprised and petrified even though it had taken her off guard.

"_When exactly had he cast it...?"_

Fortunately for her, those years of training had paid off once again and Tenten managed to evade the explosive by using substitution jutsu at the last second. And all out of reflexes.

Tenten reappeared on a firm tree branch and watched as her clone was sent sky high in the explosion.

Dust and ash scattered the ground and intoxicated the area. A smirk slipped onto her face as she took this opportunity to prepare a summoning.

However before she could get the scroll out, something very disturbing distracted her.

It was the sound of gobbling, chewing and swallowing. She squinted down but couldn't see a thing through all the dust clouds. The noise continued to fill her ears, until she heard the akatsuki member say something.

A puzzled expression made its way onto Tenten's face as she pondered on what it had meant.

"_What the heck does C2 mean? Is it a secret code? Or did I hear it wrong?"_

Then suddenly, the ground shook like there was an earthquake and the tree she was perched on came lurching down to the ground.

She stealthily jumped off just in the nick of time. With a loud _thud _the tree collapsed and Tenten was glad that it wasn't her body trapped underneath it.

Placing a hand over her damp forehead, she squinted out ahead, trying to determine where her opponent was. The dust cloud was still there but it had cleared enough for her to make out the outline of him.

Soon after taking a couple of brave paces forward, she was close enough to see the akatsuki member in full view. And when she did, a horrified gasp came out from her throat.

He was standing there before her with that same, expression. A mad and disoriented curve of the lips. Not one bit appealing. Tenten could never imagine herself falling for someone like him.

"_Next to Neji?...No chance."_

But that wasn't what was sure to give her nightmares. It was what was beside him that had shaken her most.

A life sized clay dragon. Lethal and futile. With all the claws and teeth as sharp as knives.

The unnerving vibe to it was that the thing was completely made out of clay. No, not ordinary safe clay, but the type that can blow your head off and send it sky high when activated. Just like it had done to her substitution.

However the thought of what it was capable of didn't stop Tenten from smirking and it didn't keep her eyes from blazing like a sea of flames. She was about to have some long awaited fun.

"How do you like my art, un?" He says slyly. "I'm Deidara by the way, yeah..."

His comment sort of insulted Tenten. She even felt slightly hurt by his mocking words. What sort of opponent announced who they were, just before your about to have a fight to the death?

"_That's akatsuki for ya, huh."_

"No time for small talk, sorry." Tenten made a quick hand seal and instantly reappeared behind Deidara while in mid-air and wielding the ultimate Jidanda above her head and ready to cause sever destruction and pain. The mighty weapon had so many explosive tags covering it that the metal parts were nearly undetectable. And it was ten times bigger than before.

"Explode!" They both exclaimed at the same time.

A/N: Sooo there you have it! Whose weapon will be the strongest and destroy who first? Stay tuned to find out!

Byebye!


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